Sunday, October 16, 2011

In light of Emmerich's Anonymous film, which promotes the theory that Edward de Vere (1550-1604), the seventeenth earl of Oxford, wrote the Shakespeare works, here is a compilation of some of our posts which rebut the Oxford theory.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Peter Farey and A.D. (Dolly) Wraight made the case for the agent "Le Doux" mentioned in the papers of Anthony Bacon in 1595-1596 being Christopher Marlowe. See chapters 2 and 3 of Farey's A Deception at Deptford for a summary of the evidence for this argument as it has stood until now. Farey argues that Le Doux's first name may have been Louis (also spelled Lois or Loys or Louys) based on a 16th-century wax seal in the British Library of a man in Elizabethan clothing with a baboon's face, with the name "LOIS LE DOULX".

Farey put forward some ideas about where the name Louis le Doux came from. Recently I discovered another very likely source of the name: It is the French rendition of the name of the mid-16th century Italian author Lodovico Dolce.

The key find is the book Anciens Inventaires et Catalogues de la Bibliotheque Nationale, Volume 1. On pp. 404-408 of this book is the "Catalogue de Poetes Italiens," which includes both Latin and Italian poets. On p. 406 are two items under the heading "Loys Le Doux": Le sacripant de Loys le Doux, en rithme and Les transformations de Loys le Doux. The appearance of the name in a list of Italian poets pointed me toward Lodovico Dolce: "Louis le Doux" is precisely how his name would be translated into French. Farey clinched the case by pointing out to me that both Sacripante (a "chivalric romance") and Le Transformationi (a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses) were indeed works by Lodovico Dolce.

The next question is, naturally, are there any connections to link Lodovico Dolce to Christopher Marlowe? Indeed there are. Dolce wrote a tragedy Didone in 1547, four decades before Marlowe wrote his play on the same topic. The book Christopher Marlowe: the Plays and Their Sources by Vivien Thomas and William Tydemam gives Dolce's play as the 5th of five sources for Dido, Queen of Carthage. (As an aside, Dolce's Didone itself was influenced by the work of Giovanni Giraldi Cinthio on the same topic. That is of interest to Shakespeareans because Cinthio's Hecatommithi contains tales that anticipate the plots of Measure for Measure and Othello. They were translated from Italian into French and Spanish by Shakespeare's time, but not into English. That raises the question of how William Shakespeare of Stratford could have accessed them, but there is no question about Marlowe's access to them if he was Le Doux: Hecatommithi was one of the books listed in the Bacon papers as belonging to Le Doux.)

There is another connection between Dolce and Marlowe that is particularly relevant because it relates directly to another nickname for Marlowe that is already well known. Dolce's most famous work was L'Aretino or Dialogo della Pittura. "L'Aretino" refers to his close colleague Pietro Aretino. This name will be familiar to scholars of Marlowe: On pp. 54-55 of Charles Nicholl's The Reckoning: the Murder of Christopher Marlowe, there is a long passage about Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller (completed 27 June 1593) explaining how "Nashe's tribute to the great Italian dramatist, Pietro Aretino, proves to be a sidelong epitaph for Christopher Marlowe." Nicholl cites the same comparison already made by Gabriel Harvey in Four Letters in 1592, an attack on both Nashe and Marlowe: Harvey refers to Nashe by the nickname "the Devil's Orator" and to Marlowe by the nickname "Aretine." Harvey continued this tirade against Marlowe as "Aretine" in another work dated April 1593 but not published until after Marlowe's reported death. Nicholl concludes Nashe's references to "Aretine" in The Unfortunate Traveller would have been clearly understood by his audience as a tribute to Marlowe.

Thus we have a connection between an already well-known nickname for Marlowe and the name "Louis le Doux," via Dolce's famous work L'Aretino. Since Marlowe had already been given as a nickname an English version of the name of an Italian author who inspired him, it would have been entirely in his witty character to adopt as a pseudonym a French version of the name of another Italian author who inspired him and who had a connection to Aretino. Marlowe's friends in his literary circles would get the reference, but other people would not — an excellent choice for a pseudonym!

The Italian origin of the name Louis le Doux fits well with the existing evidence for the Marlovian theory. Marlovians believe it is likely Marlowe went to Italy in the years immediately after his faked death, since Shakespeare's Italian-themed plays begin appearing around that time. Marlowe's adoption of an Italian poet's name, in the guise of a French translation, when he returns to England two years later, fits this theory well.Emmerich Shakespeare kill Marlowe?

The blog is closed

Ted Hughes, British Poet Laureate (1984-1998)

"The way to really develop as a writer is to make yourself a political outcast, so that you have to live in secret. This is how Marlowe developed into Shakespeare."

Letters of Ted Hughes, ed. Christopher Reid, Faber 2007, p.120

Welcome to MSC: the Web's #1 Blog on Christopher Marlowe

We kicked off in May 2008. We're a blog dedicated to the brilliant Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. Yes, we believe he could have authored many of the Shakespeare works, and so we offer up hearty servings of delicious intrigue. Thanks for visiting!

THE MARLOWE-AS-SHAKESPEARE CONSPIRACY LAID OUT FOR YOU!

Poets' Corner, London's Westminster Abbey

See the question mark?

THE POWER OF US: KIT Marlowe Up, Earl of Oxford Down

"Meanwhile, the authorship debate shows no signs of fading away. Francis Bacon's star has waned, eclipsed long ago by the Earl of Oxford's. Now Christopher Marlowe's star is on the rise. 'It looks like there's a shelf life to every candidate' of about 75 or 80 years, Shapiro says. 'There's a lot more energy and enthusiasm behind Marlowe.'"

Christopher Marlowe - prodigy, successful playwright/poet, and pretty darn good spy for Queen Elizabeth - lands himself in the kind of hot water that may send him to the gallows. His powerful handlers in espionage, concerned about saving their talented agent, decide to fake his death and send him away. Marlowe, in hiding, continues to write plays and poems. William Shakespeare agrees to be the frontman for these works.

"perfect"

From Amazon: "Rodney Bolt’s book is not an attempt to prove that, rather than dying at 29 in a tavern brawl, Christopher Marlowe staged his own death, fled to Europe, and went on to write the work attributed to Shakespeare. Instead, it takes that as the starting point for a playful and brilliantly written 'fake biography' of Marlowe, which turns out to be a life of the Bard as well." The Spectator praises: "A triumph...perfect." Click the pic to purchase! And click here for our interview with Rodney Bolt!

Buy This!

Wonder who wrote Shakespeare? Mike Rubbo's Much Ado About Something makes a compelling case that it was Marlowe. As seen on PBS Frontline and now on DVD. Elvis Mitchell of the New York Times praises: " . . . an inviting piece of film . . . Much Ado About Something is a film of ideas - well, notions, anyway - that are bound to stimulate discussion, an aspect long missing from documentary." Click the pic to purchase! (or rent it today on Netflix!) Click here for our print interview with Mike Rubbo, click here for our video interview. Click here for an 8-minute preview of the film. Click here for a Tampa Tribune feature about Mike Rubbo.

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